The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

blood

Lab testing startup Theranos started from a revolutionary idea: performing blood tests quickly and inexpensively using only a drop of blood. The idea may have been more revolutionary if the technology actually worked yet, and if its lab in California had been operating up to current standards. Now the federal government has imposed sanctions on the company, which include being unable to bill Medicare or Medicaid for its services, and its founder and CEO can’t own or run a laboratory for the next two years. [More]

Finally, an American ad for feminine hygiene products implying that shed uterine linings are not a thin blue liquid. This print ad for Procter & Gamble’s Always brand acknowledges, if only in the form of a tiny red dot, what actually happens to the pads that they once marketed by showing women doing cartwheels in white pants. Or something. [More]

The New York Blood Center just sent out a notice asking people to donate blood despite the nasty weather — because people still have surgery and whatnot even when it snows. Apparently, drives have been cancelled and people have been staying away because of the awful weather and the shelf life of platelets is only 5 days. So, if you’re in a place that has been having nasty weather, why not call your local blood bank and help them out? [More]

Sure, there’s probably a perfectly innocuous explanation why a woman called the Home Depot in Jacksonville, Illinois and asked how to remove a large quantity of blood from her carpets. But that doesn’t stop people’s imaginations from running wild, and didn’t stop the employee who took the call from alerting the police.

The image at left has been redacted for the protection of our more sensitive readers. The events of this story, if true, simply boggle the mind. A German tourist visiting New York City alleges that his delicious steak was somehow served with a used tampon on it. Warning: blissfully grainy photo and video inside.

Every time Kevin unscrews a new bottle of Kraft salad dressing, the sharp plastic hinge cuts him. This is good to know if you’re in a supermarket and need to show another shopper that you’re not to be messed with. It’s also good to know if you’re trying to unscrew a Kraft dressing bottle, we guess.

He took the wrapper back to the KFC and showed it to the manager. He says he was met with nothing but evasiveness and defensiveness. “They didn’t want to hear it. I kept hearing it’s not blood. There’s no way that happened…it couldn’t happen here.”

A customer of a Louisville KFC/Taco Bell is claiming that smears of human blood were all over her order. ” Briana Ralston says she and her 1-year-old daughter were already home, had already eaten part of their dinner by the time they discovered what looks like human blood on the bag and wrappers — even where the wrappers came into contact with the food.”

The development and testing of experimental blood substitutes has been fraught with controversy: Baxter International Inc. stopped research on one such product in 1998 when more than 20 patients given the substitute died.

Consumer affairs is a subject with enough maniacs and skeletons-in-closets that this site really celebrates Halloween all year round. But we’re going to make at least a token effort to get ghastlier as it gets closer to Halloween.

Man, it’s a great day for disgusting fast food stories. First, the Kentucky Fried Roachwich and now, a customer who ordered a McDonald’s strawberry sundae and discovered it was topped with a different crimson liquid entirely—human blood.

According to court documents, Jara bought food, including four hot fudge sundaes, at the restaurant’s drive-thru window on Dec. 30, 2004.

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